So, what do you do?

What a question.

No matter what you do for a living, it seems you are placed into a box according to what your job is. That box changes, according to the social situation you are in.

If you a banker, for example, you are akin to genital warts if you are at a socialist barbeque, but would be a great catch when you are talking to the ladies at the bar on a Friday night in the financial district.

You would be a god at the above-mentioned barbeque is you were a die-hard environmentalist, but you certainly would not be welcome in the home of a hard-working logger (nor likely in that of the banker for that matter). And this is the most simplistic and shallow analogy I can give.

In any society, there are lots of jobs to be done. We need people to do them. It is what keeps ANY society functioning.

What got humans through the ice age was that we learned to specialise and delegate tasks to individuals.

We all need someone to grow our food, make our shoes, print our books, maintain our roads and take our garbage away. Some of us need our homes painted, financial advice, reverse-cycle air-conditioning and a pedicure.

What you do for a living can be determined by hard work, not enough had work, good or bad luck, circumstance, chance, chaos, personal opportunism, family expectation, lack of choice, level of education, socio-economic background ….. the list is infinite.

What this blog is about is to celebrate the diversity of occupations in the same way we should celebrate the diversity of humanity.

It’s not just about “So, what do you do?”. It’s a respect thing.